[cissel.FTW]

From the book "COLLECTING OLD PHOTOGRAPHS" By Margaret Haller - NY 1978 page 55 :

" Frances Benjamin Johnston (1864-1952), one of the first of America's documentary photographers, a pioneer woman photographer, and one of the first photographers to make a business of supplying pictures to magazines. Her major journalistic work was accomplished between 1889 and 1910, and thereafter she specialized in photographing places of architectural interest, as late as the 1930's duing a series on architecture in the state of Virginia. Her most notable work includes documentaries on iron ore mining operations, the women workers of Lynn, Massachusetts, and a series on the public schools of Washington, D. C. In 1899 she photographed Admiral George Dewey and his men on board the Olympia returning from their historic victory at Minila Bay. Her other photographs of notables included those of members of society in Washington, including the members of the President's own family. In 1901 hers was the last photograph made of President McKinley before his assassination. Miss Johnston also produced a sympathetic series of photographs of black institutions including most notably Tuskegee and Hampton Institutes. At a time, around the turn of the century, when Photo Secession secured the allegiance of many studio photographers, she apparently remained outside of the movement, engaged in her daily round of varying assignments. "Her contribution to photography was
not in technology or in artistic innovation but in excellence as a practitioner of her art," according to her biographers Daniel and Smock, in " A TALENT FOR DETAIL." Today a single one of her published photogravures may be worth over $100.00.

1. Clark book, records of The descendants of Hugh Clark, of Watertown, Mass. 1640-1866